


Ascension

by Untherius



Series: Dawn and Sky and Sun [1]
Category: Tangled (2010)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Metamorphosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:47:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Untherius/pseuds/Untherius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after re-establishing the geo-political seat of Corona, part of Rapunzel's past catches up to her.  It's something she, Eugene, and their children have seen coming for quite some time.  No longer able to ignore it, Rapunzel must leave Eugene...and Earth...to avoid something far worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ascension

Eugene awoke at pre-dawn. A quick glance at the window told him it was less than an hour before sunrise. The lack of Rapunzel's familiar warmth told him his wife had already made her egress. He peeled back the covers, stood to his feet, and looked bleary-eyed toward the French doors leading to the veranda on which they always shared their morning sun-bath, often with other family members.

While Eugene had been a morning person since the year before he and Rapunzel were married, he still often had to actively chase the sleep from his eyes. His wife just as often helped him with that, her indomitable perkiness as refreshing as always. That perkiness was curiously absent.

He noticed the doors were still closed, which they wouldn't have been had Rapunzel already stepped outside. Where was she?

“Rapunzel?” said Eugene. Silence answered him. “Rapunzel?” he repeated, a little louder. There was still silence. Eugene wasn't worried quite yet. Sometimes his wife stole down to the kitchens for an early-morning snack. Were she pregnant, that would have been nearly a given. Where'd she gone now? That woman could be so unpredictable! Eugene supposed that was one of the reasons he loved her so very much.

He stepped over to the chair where he always laid his under-drawers and paused. He and his wife often took their sun-baths entirely in the nude. He glanced over at the opposite chair where Rapunzel kept her own and noticed they were missing, so he donned his own shorts, not bothering to cover his upper half. He was halfway across the room leading toward the door to the hall when he noticed something on their writing desk.

He strode over and peered at it. It was a piece of paper with writing on it. That was odd. It hadn't been there when they'd gone to bed the night before. Odder still, it was strewn with small spots, all emitting a faint, but familiar, golden glow. He held it up, but it was still too dim to read. He struck a match and lit the seldom-used pillar candle that sat on the desk. Rapunzel's own light was all they ever needed to see between the sun-times. Then he bent over the paper and began to read.

“My dearest, dearest Eugene,” it read.

“I'm unsure what to say that hasn't been said multiple times already and there's no easy way to say it anyway. I have to go. This has been coming for a very long time. It's the only way, and I don't think I need to tell you what 'it' is. We and so many others have done the math and so forth over and over and it's unavoidable. It's necessary for the survival of Earth. I suppose we should have seen it coming even before we were married. Please don't try to find me...it's too dangerous for you. Where I'm going no one can follow anyway. This...won't be death. Quite frankly, I'm really not sure what it will be. I don't know what this new life will mean for me, but know that it scares me at least as much as it scares you. I really don't want to do this and saying that it breaks my heart is a vast understatement. If I can contact you at some point in the future, I will. In the meantime, look for me in Orion.

“You may have noticed the glowy spots on the paper. Save my tears, Eugene. Someone is bound to need them.

“I love you, Eugene, with all my heart and then some. We've created some beautiful things together...our children...our kingdom...our new and glorious civilization. We've had a really good run, and that's not something that many can say to the extent that you and I can. If I had to do it all over again, even if it meant avoiding what I must do tonight, I wouldn't change a thing...well, maybe a few things, but not bad for nearly half a millennium, eh? As some of the greatest things are born out of pain and anguish, perhaps this will be one of them.

“Don't let the kingdom fall apart in my absence. It's the one thing that must endure. You have plenty of good help.

“I apologize for screaming at you yesterday. That was a horrible way to spend our last hours together and I'm very sorry. I've been under a lot of stress because of this, but that's no excuse. Please forgive me.

“Take care of little Harold. He's too young to understand. It breaks my heart that I won't get to watch him grow up. Perhaps one day he'll get to know me as whatever it is I'm becoming.

“I leave you not only with all of our gorgeous children...and may they be the part of myself I leave behind...but also my love.

“Your loving wife, Rapunzel.

“P.S.- This letter serves as my instruction to execute Provision 2 of my will.”

Eugene set the paper gently down onto the desk. He exhaled heavily and ran a hand through his hair. His heart thudded in his chest. There was only one thing that letter could mean. His mind told him his wife was right, but his heart told him to stop her.

He pulled on his deer-skin boots and dashed out the door, not bothering to close it behind him. He wasn't even sure where he was going. He knew what Rapunzel had to do, but he had no idea how or where she was going to do it. He suddenly stopped. There was only one person he knew who was powerful enough to find Rapunzel when she didn't wish to be found.

He turned around and ran to his eldest daughter's suite. He knocked on the door. “Sophia?”

A minute later, the door opened and his daughter looked at him. Her face fell. “Daddy? What's wrong?”

“It's your mother. She...she's doing it.”

Sophia's eyes widened. “Really? Are you sure?”

“Yeah. She left a letter. It had glowy tears on it. Honey, I...” His voice trailed off.

“You're scared,” she finished. “Me, too.”

“Can you find her?”

“Of course. You're not going to try to stop her, are you?”

He nodded.

“How? And is it a good idea?”

“I don't know and of course it isn't. But I just can't let her go...not like this. I have to see her, if...if only for the last time.”

Sophia sighed, then closed her eyes in concentration. A moment later, her eyes flew open. “You were right. She _was_ trying to mask her presence. But...”

“But what?”

“She abruptly stopped blocking and then I sensed a sudden spike in her heat signature. I think it's begun.”

Eugene's eyes widened. “But where _is_ she?”

“She's atop that knob east of Powell Butte.”

“Why all the way over there?”

“I think it's the closest high place where she won't do any damage when...when she goes.”

Eugene spun around and sprinted off down the hall.

“Daddy? Daddy, don't!”

He didn't listen and was barely aware of his daughter's bare footfalls as she followed him.

*****

Eugene vaulted off of his horse, which he hadn't bothered to saddle, and hit the ground running. He peered up at the lookout tower floating above him in the gathering dawn. It had once held a garrison, but had been decommissioned despite a movement to incorporate it into the Beacon system. Something brightly-shining was perched atop the structure. Eugene couldn't make out its shape, but he knew exactly what it was.

“Eugene, _NO!_ ” came Rapunzel's voice from the light. “You...you shouldn't be here!”

“I can't let you do it!” he called.

“It's already started,” she replied, her voice unearthly, ethereal, and throbbing with power, “and I can't stop it. You know that. Please don't make this any harder than it already is. You have to go...you, too, Sophia. Leaving you is hard enough without killing you in the process and that's exactly what will happen if you stay. Now, I need to concentrate in order to achieve escape velocity and I can't do that if I'm worrying about you. Now, _go!_ ”

“I can't!”

“You must! I wish it didn't have to be this way, but it does. Didn't you read my letter?”

“Yes.”

“Then there's little more to say. That's why I wrote it.”

Eugene paused. “Honey, I forgive you.”

He wasn't sure she'd heard him. Then, “Thank-you dearest. That means a lot to me. Sophia, please get your father out of here. I'm nearly out of time.”

“Daddy, please,” said Sophia, who'd stepped up beside her father, “she's right. We have to go.”

Eugene wouldn't budge.

“Don't make me force you.”

Eugene looked at his daughter. “I...I can't let her go.”

“You must.”

“You don't understand.”

“I've had eight husbands, Daddy, and I had to watch helplessly as each one of them died in my arms. I'm pretty sure I do understand. Now, you have to come with me. You have to keep the kingdom going and I'm not sure I can protect you when...when Mother goes.”

They were both distracted by a sudden pulse of light above them. The already titanium-white glare emanating from Rapunzel began to expand. Arcs of blue lightning shot out from her...or, rather, from her general location...shattering pieces of ferro-concrete wall and pylon. Ropy-looking bits that looked like solar prominences leaped out and licked at the hillside, the clouds, the trees, melting or setting afire everything they touched.

At first, it was slow, but quickly built and Sophia had to throw herself onto her father and force him down behind a boulder to shield him. Their two horses shrieked in terror and then agony as they, too, fell victim to the rising fire-storm.

Eugene huddled on the ground, unable to move. He could have lifted his daughter, but fear and grief kept him immobile. He felt the intense heat and a rising, howling sound, underlain with screeches and wails unlike anything he'd ever heard. Then it all dropped off sharply.

He felt Sophia's weight shift from him and he rose to his feet, slowly and unwillingly looking up. The top hundred feet of the butte had been reduced to a smoldering, glassy lump, the lookout completely erased. He looked up to see a bright orb rising rapidly through the sky high above them.

“ _NOOOO!!!_ ” he wailed. He again dropped to his knees and watched helplessly as his beloved hurtled up into the heavens, tears streaming down his cheeks. The sight held his gaze until the light had receded into a small spot. He bent his head and let the grief flow through him, violent sobs wracking his body. He was barely aware of his daughter's tears as she threw her own arms around him. Together, they cried such tears as would revive the dead.

*****

All of Corona mourned for an entire year. The kingdom's neighbors and allies also observed their own rites for the passing of a head of state. Eugene fell into a deepening melancholy. In public, he was sad, but coping well enough. In private, it was another matter. Sophia, her siblings, and their collective offspring did their best to comfort their father, but even they recognized that one did not simply get over losing a spouse to whom one had been married for close to five hundred years.

The years passed, but Eugene's condition only seemed to worsen. The day-to-day running of Corona fell mainly to Sophia. She was beginning to worry that her father might waste away. What worried her more was the thought that she might one day have to follow her mother into the heavens. Then one day, that all changed...and more....


End file.
